A Hundred Visions and Revisions
by liftedlorax
Summary: Harry doesn't really like remembering. As he's grown older, he's found that discovering or creating or even making things up are all much less painful than remembering. Harry/Draco, EWE, Complete.


**Characters/Pairings: **Harry/Draco

**Warning(s):** not very graphic sexual content, EWE, adult language

**Word Count:** ~11,000

**Disclaimer:** I make no profit from nor do I claim any ownership of the characters and situations discussed in this story; they belong to JK Rowling and Co. The title is taken from a poem by T.S. Eliot.

**Notes: **This was written for hd_smoochfest and beta'd by the wonderful Wendy and Tara, my rockstars. Enjoy!

**in a minute there is time**

**for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.**

"Hogwarts, too?"

They meet, and they talk to each other. The blond boy reminds him of Dudley, still, and Harry can't help but let the dimmest hints of dislike already creep into his subconscious.

And then things change.

"I say, look at that man!" the blond boy says.

Harry explains who Hagrid is, where he works, and what he does, and the boy's eyes widen, big and blinking gray like two large circles of storm cloud. Harry blinks back, newly 11 and utterly taken by magic, almost misses his next words.

"But that's brilliant, isn't it? Can you imagine—he gets to work with all the creatures on the grounds, yeah, and I wonder if he can see Thestrals? I'd love to see Thestrals—Mother gets angry when I say that, and Father laughs when Mother can't hear him, but I really would like to."

Harry has no idea what Thestrals are, doesn't know what one needs to do to see them, but the boy just called Hagrid brilliant. Harry also happens to think Hagrid's brilliant.

Harry smiles at the boy for the first time; the boy smiles back, lips thin and trembling slightly, and now Harry can see that he's nervous. Harry's smile widens.

_But of course, that's not really how it happened. Sometimes, Harry forgets._

Beatrice Trudeau is 64 years old, always smells of silver polish ("The Muggle kind," she says. "It lasts longer."), and is currently the absolute bane of Harry's existence.

"I don't see what is so difficult to understand about the word _no_," Harry tells her very slowly, in case she's gone hard of hearing and needs to read his lips (she hasn't. She will smack him for this in approximately 30 seconds).

Yes, there it is—she swats him on the back of the head and huffs, planting her hand on her musty-robed hip, right above a stain that is probably from some weird blended refurbishing potion that she concocts in the wicked-smelling store room Harry avoids like the plague. This is difficult in a shop that is roughly the size of a postage stamp, but somehow Harry manages.

"It's only two letters," he continues, trying not to smile like a little boy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. He does, though, and she swats him again, now with the rolled up proposal she had dropped onto his desk and started this conversation with.

"I can fire you," she says, and he scoffs, leaning back in his chair, kicking a leg up awkwardly onto his desk and knocking over a stack of notes, oops. "I can, and I will, and you must remember that I am your boss and you are supposed to do as I say."

"Fire me, then," Harry says, smoothly calling her bluff. Bea's mouth tightens, the lines in her aged face deepening into a frown. "I'm not going."

"Harry. _Harrry_." She's already switched into her grandmotherly voice, transitioning from stern professional in a heartbeat, and he rolls his eyes. "Do you remember when you used to love fieldwork?"

Harry shrugs. "Vaguely. And you know it's not the fieldwork I object to; I don't mind travelling."

"Exactly! You don't mind travelling—when _was _the last time you made it out of England, hm?"

He opens his mouth to answer, but as is common with her, she powers on to answer herself. "It's been two years _at least_. It was Warsaw, wasn't it, chasing that silly belt."

He pretends to think about it, even though he knows she's right, and she knows she's right. Then he shrugs again. "And? I think Warsaw was a fitting final trip to cap off my international travelling days—I _found_ the silly belt, didn't I?" Bea's face sours even more at the reminder. The 'silly belt' was, of course, given back to the magical community at Warsaw, because Harry didn't understand why the Magic Belt of Poland should be anywhere but in Poland. Bea hadn't exactly agreed.

"It doesn't matter," Bea says, shaking her head to dismiss discussion of the belt. "Two years, Harry, my dear. That's too long. You need to get back out there—this is important!"

"If it's so important, why can't you go?"

"I'm _old_," she moans, and that makes Harry laugh out loud.

"I'm old, too! Besides, who, out of the two of us, flies laps every Saturday morning? It definitely isn't me; my knees get too stiff."

"You're full of it," Bea answers fussily, which cracks Harry up again. "Don't lie to me, son, I can read your face. You're 30 years my junior—you're entirely fit for this. You _need _this, even."

"I need more coffee," Harry says with a heavy sigh, looking hopefully through the door of his office for Bea's son, Ben, who sometimes hangs around the shop and is always willing to make a run down Diagon for either of them (with slight preference to Harry; he suspects that there's a bit of a crush happening there, unfortunately. Not that he doesn't take advantage of it).

"Did you even read the entire proposal?" Bea asks. Harry shakes his head.

"I stopped when I read _accompanied by a Ministry cartography consultant_, as I'm sure you could tell. No matter how much of it I read, my answer is still going to be no." He leans forward over the desk, wondering if he thinks about it hard enough, Ben will somehow hear his projected thoughts and appear with coffee. He thinks he should develop some kind of long distance Legilimancy, and then decides that if Hermione hasn't invented it by now, it probably isn't possible.

"Bollocks!" Bea shouts, and Harry starts and gapes at her disbelievingly.

"Beatrice! Well, I never."

"Harry, if you knew what this assignment was—well, you wouldn't turn it down, let me tell you, regardless of any Ministry involvement—or _whom _the Ministry's sending."

"There is literally nothing you could say right now that would make me change my mind."

"What about the Key of Solomon?"

Harry huffs out a laugh, but stops when her face doesn't even flicker. "You…what? The real one?"

"No, the puppet one the Muggles like to pretend they know all about—yes, the real one! The original one, too—or, well, allegedly. The Ministry certainly seems to believe so, though why they're insisting on sending that map nutter—oh _honestly _Harry, don't look at me like that, it's been years since you two split, I'm allowed to call him whatever I want—I'll never know. But that's not the point. The point is that I want that manuscript—_I _want one of the most renowned grimoires of the ancient world, and I certainly want it on the Ministry's dime."

"And then what? You'll sell it in the shop?" They both snort at this—nothing ever really gets sold at Bea's Bewitching Antiques, except in the odd case when some adventurous people come in looking for furniture with personality (and by personality they mean, well, actual thoughts and feelings and the ability to make them known) and history. Bea lives on a fairly generous Ministry pension from her days working to hunt down lost or mostly forgotten magical artifacts for greedy bureaucrats. Now, she mostly haggles with old biddies who have buried magical treasure gathering dust in their living rooms, so that she can study it and write about it and then let it gather dust in her shop.

Harry helps. He likes his job.

"You know what. We'll have a piece of vital magical history here, in our very hands—before, of course, we have to hand it over to the Ministry for _preservation_, ugh. Unless I just decide that the grimoire isn't real, you know—but never mind that. Tell me you're not salivating at the chance of finding this, of locking yourself up in here for days with this. You know that you are."

He has to concede there. Part of what he loves about this job is how it makes him feel 11 all over again—discovering new things about magic that he can now touch and hold in his hands and experience for himself. The idea of finding (and sometimes the search is more fun than the studying he does afterwards) something as sacred to magic as the Key of Solomon is making his fingers itch a bit, and his heart thud in his chest. He tries to keep all of that off his face, but she must see it, or she just knows him too well, because Bea smiles slowly and keeps on talking.

"You're going to a small village just southeast of Naples, called—"

"Agerola," Harry finishes, having picked up the proposal again and starting to read over it. Bea nods enthusiastically and lets Harry continue. "In a population of just over 7000, one of them has the Key, and you want me to work my Potter magic and find it for you."

"Precisely."

His fingers press into the parchment, eyes sweeping over the words _cartography consultant _again, as well as the name attached to them. "And why does he need to come?"

"The Ministry—"

"Sod the Ministry. The Ministry has as much control over him as he allows them to—he'd tell them to go fuck themselves in a heartbeat, take his maps and his family fortune and never work with them again if the mood struck him. Why is he coming?"

Bea's voice is quiet when she answers, no longer grandmotherly or adventurous—just his friend, his very good friend, who has helped to build as normal a life as possible for The Boy Who Lived. "The area is uncharted."

Harry snorts. "I find it extremely improbable that there's any corner of this world he hasn't mapped out yet, never mind in Europe—"

"Well, we've found one. He was very adamant about being allowed on this expedition; he's earned the right to make these requests, you know. I can't deny him."

"I know that. I know."

"He's absurd, but he's brilliant—"

"I know that too."

"And, look at it this way. He's a mapmaker—you won't get lost."

Harry gives her a rueful smile, eyeing her over the top of his glasses in a way he's learned works better with age. "He used to tell me the best mapmakers are the ones who like to get lost."

"You used to love to get lost, Harry."

He remembers that, too—remembers Minsk, Lisbon, Bogota, Volgograd. He remembers dozens of _Point Me_'s cast, the dizzying feel of repeated Portkeys and the nauseating squeeze of Apparition. There were broom flights across the Channel, and they were always so much better at navigating by air, but of course that wasn't the point—so what they always loved best was the crunch of snow or dirt or sand or moss beneath their feet, wands out but mostly unnoticed, wandering and weary and so fucking happy that it still hurts to remember.

Harry doesn't really like remembering. As he's grown older, he's found that discovering or creating or even making things up are all much less painful than remembering.

Sometimes looking for lost objects is better than finding them—history is always such a disappointment compared to the stories he's already thought up.

But the Key of Solomon is something different—the Key of Solomon's history _is _magic, and not only is it fascinating from an academic perspective, it's also important from a practical standpoint. The wrong person getting their hands on such a powerful magical tool could spell out a disaster, the kind of disaster that Harry doesn't have the energy or will in his bones anymore to fix.

He rolls the proposal up, doesn't need to see any more to know his answer now that he's thought that way. Bea lets out a sigh, which makes him smile as he delivers his news. "So. I'm leaving on Saturday, then?"

She whoops in an entirely inappropriate fashion for a woman of her age, which is why he loves her. "That's my boy! I'm so proud of you, Harry."

"I'm not a boy, you know."

"You will always be a boy to me, have been since you stumbled in here nearly two decades ago and begged me for a job. I'm quite glad I said yes." She smiles at him, and he smiles back, and his stomach is doing flips but he has to agree with her—he is glad she said yes, too. He is glad he'll be travelling again, not so glad that it isn't alone.

But the thing about history is if you try hard enough, you can ignore it. The Key of Solomon is hidden in an Italian village on the Amalfi Coast—Harry has only been to Sicily and Venice, so there's no retracing of old footsteps physically, and he can make sure he keeps it that way mentally as well.

And emotionally, too—there was a point when Harry stopped wanting to get lost, wanted to find something and grab it and hold onto it, rooted and solid. Draco Malfoy never had any interest in a relationship that wasn't spent bouncing around the world, tracking magic and mapping the lines of it from deep within the Earth, and Harry is quite positive that hasn't changed. Nor does he want to know if it has.

**for I have known them all already, known them all**

They meet again for the first time after Hogwarts at the new restaurant a few doors down from the Leaky Cauldron, already syphoning off its customers daily and packed to the gills. Draco is at a table and ignoring his lunch to talk a mile a minute at Pansy Parkinson, who looks as if she's wishing to be struck deaf.

Harry is totally fine with waiting for a table, no, really, he is, but the hostess is insisting that he not wait any longer, and is stalking towards a table where an unfamiliar couple is languidly finishing their lunch together, readying to clear it. Harry looks around the restaurant in a panic, too uncomfortable to walk out. He sees any number of people he might recognize, people friendly enough that they probably wouldn't mind him pulling up a chair and joining them before the hostess embarrasses him completely, but for some reason he locks on to Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson and makes a quick decision.

"Oh," he says to the hostess, pulling her away from the couple's table. "I've just seen my friends." And he hurries over, grabs a chair at their table for four, and tries to smile charmingly. "So I'm thinking you both owe me a bit, yeah? Play along."

Draco gives him a particularly sour look, most likely for interrupting and/or existing, but Pansy looks a bit relieved, actually. "Yes, I suppose saving us from death by Fiendfyre and death by crazed megalomaniac respectively earns you a spot at our table. Keep your elbows off and we're even," she says.

"Deal," Harry says, and suddenly his smile feels less fake. Draco is squinting at him, frowning, and Harry just looks back, secretly daring him to make a spoiled, scathing, ungrateful comment.

Instead, Draco surprises him; he pushes over his untouched lobster salad. "Say, Potter. What do you know about maps?" Pansy groans, very unladylike, but Harry just blinks.

"Not much, though I should probably brush up. I'm starting a new job that involves a lot of travel."

And Draco smiles back, his teeth very white. Harry has to blink again, thinks _never knew he could smile like that _and also _he's kind of beautiful, in a pointy, gittish way_.

"That's excellent," Draco says. "We'll have lots to talk about, then."

_That's not really how it happened, either. They met up again at a nightclub, got into a fight over a stupid comment Malfoy made, and wound up scuffling like schoolboys again. Harry threw Malfoy up against a wall, pressed against him, and got embarrassingly, abruptly hard. Malfoy noticed, sneered, and it ended with dirty, fumbling handjobs in the men's and Harry feeling disgusting, ashamed, and utterly addicted to Draco Malfoy. It took three months of the same quick and dirty routine for either of them to decide it was anything more._

_Harry likes the restaurant version better._

It takes ten minutes of being in the same room with Draco again for him to realize that he isn't going to make this easy.

"We'll be gone a while," Draco is telling Bea, using sweeping hand gestures the way he usually does when explaining something complicated to people he thinks are less intelligent than him (it's something Harry's used to seeing). Bea is nodding along, rolling her eyes and winking at Harry intermittently. And Harry is attempting to make himself invisible, shuffling through his research notes for the Key of Solomon and wishing he were anywhere in the world but this cramped shop with his ex-boyfriend and his boss. Then he thinks of the expedition, travelling with Draco again after years of travelling alone, and decides to check that—he'd rather be here, listening to Draco ramble, than out there with him and no one else.

"The area is small, but you know as well as I do that this process isn't exactly fast," Draco continues, and Bea just nods some more. "The good news is that if the Key _is _there, I should be able to trace the magic while I'm mapping it out. The bad news is that I have to map it out while I trace, which takes time."

"You are the expert here, Draco. I trust your judgment, as does Harry. Isn't that right, Harry?" Bea calls. Harry grunts, reading the same line of notes for the 30th time.

Draco sniffs. "Good. Harry, you'll have to make arrangements to be gone for quite a while—possibly a month—"

"Like hell," Harry says, not looking up but clenching his hand around a quill. "It wouldn't take you a month to map the magic in _China_, never mind 19 square kilometers. In fact, it _didn't _take you a month to map the magic in China, did it? 15 days, wasn't it?" He looks up, making eye contact for the first time that day, and Draco is giving him half a smirk.

"Thirteen, actually. But China was different—one, I had a team in China, I wasn't working alone, and two, the magical signatures weren't as distorted by the coastline as the Agerola ones will be. Besides, you're assuming it'll take you less than a month to actually find the Key, and that's less than probable."

"More than probable, actually. I know you don't like to admit it, but I am quite good at my job." He realizes what he's doing, then, when Draco's smirk widens, when the challenge flashes and heats up in his eyes like a spark. He stuffs his notes into his rucksack and stands up before Draco can shoot something back and draw him into this kind of verbal sparring he's definitely outgrown. "Ten days, max, Bea. I'm positive it won't be any more than that—if you're still tracing, Draco, I'm leaving you there."

Draco rolls his eyes and huffs, sitting back in his seat like a petulant child. "Oh come on, surely your boyfriend can stand to let you go for a little while."

Harry will ignore that. He will let that slide. He is mature, and he does not take bait any more. "I don't have a boyfriend, Draco." Okay, so now he'll just ignore the look of completely unbidden glee on Draco's face. Really, he used to be more subtle, once upon a time.

"Excellent," Draco says, and Harry twitches with irritation and a weird sense of déjà vu.

"We're going to miss our Portkey," he says, and Draco waves at him lazily and turns back to Bea.

"So, what do you think are the chances of this being the real thing? I feel like I'll know as soon as we get there—that kind of magic is just impossible to miss, you know—but it's possible someone's spelled a fake, it's been done before."

"The Ministry is certainly excited," Bea says, shooting a completely unapologetic look at Harry, who just sighs. "I'm withholding judgment until I get my hands on it." She's rubbing her fingers together almost subconsciously, and Harry can't help but crack a smile.

"Well, that'll never happen if we miss our Portkey," Harry says, and then he resists the urge to groan when Bea and Draco exchange eye rolls over him.

"So dramatic," Bea says.

"He was always like that, even at school," says Draco, and that has Harry very nearly spluttering in outrage. Instead he just makes an angry sort of gurgle and grits his teeth.

"Let's go, _now_, or we're not going at all."

"You do realize you're 34, not 84, right?" Draco asks him.

"I try to remind him of that as much as I can," Bea answers, and Harry really does groan then and decides to give up.

"Fine. Just fine. I'm waiting outside—if you're not there in two minutes—"

"Relax," Draco says, finally standing up. Bea follows and reaches out to shake Draco's hand, before suddenly pulling him into a quick hug that makes silly, stupid things happen in Harry's chest.

"Take care of yourself, Draco, and take care of him," she says, not even bothering to keep her voice down. Harry snorts. "And do stick around a while when you come back—I've missed you around here, lad."

Draco smiles one of his arse-kissing smiles, though maybe that's unfair—Draco and Bea always genuinely liked each other, and that didn't have to change because of the breakup. "I look forward to that, actually." He shoots a quick look at Harry from the corner of his eyes, and Harry pretends not to notice. "If things go well on this trip, I'm actually thinking of taking a small break. There's only so much of the world to see, you know, and I want to save some for my golden years."

Another silly, stupid thing happens in Harry's chest at the thought of that, and he ignores it resolutely. "Bye, Bea. Don't burn the shop down while I'm gone."

"Bastard," Bea says fondly. Draco gives a long-suffering sigh.

"I tried to stamp that out of him when we were dating, but I suppose it didn't work."

"On second thought, feel free to torch it," Harry says. "Just wait 'til I come back and lock me inside."

"So dramatic," Bea and Draco say at the same time, and then they both laugh. Harry wonders if he can fire off a quick _incendio _right now without drawing too much attention to himself.

They finally start off for their Portkey site, Draco blessedly quiet, as if he ran out of words volleying them back and forth with Beatrice. Harry is grateful, hopeful, and so of course it doesn't last.

Ten seconds after their feet touch down on Italian soil, Draco whips his wand out and starts talking. "Okay, there's definitely a trail leading through those trees—the whole town is surrounded by forest, isn't it, except by the sea? Are we staying closer to the water or to the trees? _Vestigium_!" Blue light shoots out from the tip of his wand and sinks into the ground, and Draco follows it like a bloodhound. Harry wearily follows, knowing the routine by now, wishing he could stop thinking of it as a routine.

He watches Draco pull out a leather-bound journal and quill and start scribbling lines absentmindedly, wand now sticking out of his back pocket, still speaking too fast for Harry to respond to him. "The closer we get to the coast, the more distorted the trace will be—is there anywhere you want to check first, or are you just going to wander?"

"I was thinking," Harry says when Draco finally stops for a breath. "That we could check in to the hostel first, get things settled, and then walk around town." He waits for that to be shot down, because he knows that that's not how Draco likes to do things—he runs himself ragged chasing magical energy and scribbling the lines of it down, desperate to get as much information down before he has to stop for food or rest. Oftentimes, he wouldn't even stop unless Harry forced him to, and sometimes he wonders who makes Draco stop now that Harry's gone.

But Harry doesn't like to wonder about those kinds of things. It's not his business anymore.

Draco surprises him, though—and he doesn't like that, either. Draco had hardly ever surprised him before, unless you count the visions in the snow globe, which Harry wishes he could but still knows he can't.

Draco says, "Sounds like a plan," and snaps his journal shut. He smirks at the look of plain shock on Harry's face and takes only a second to cast a wistful glance at the invisible trace of magic in the Earth that only he can sense, before turning back and gesturing for Harry to lead the way.

Harry has to remind himself that gaping isn't part of the whole _aloof, removed, mature _plan and pushes back to awareness.

"Right then. The hostel is about equidistant from the sea and the trees, by the start of the Path of the Gods. Glamour your—"

"—wand, I know," Draco says, and he's smiling for some reason. Harry pointedly looks away from it. "Way ahead of you. How many Muggles are we dealing with?"

"About half the town, give or take."

Draco whistles lowly. "There's a lot of magic in this town for being half Muggle. Are you sure?"

"That's what my research shows. Do you think all the magic is from the Key?"

Draco's hand moves to his back pocket, and Harry can't see it but he knows he's doing something complicated with his wand. "No, this magic is deep." He frowns, but in a thoughtful, half-excited way Harry knows entirely too well. "This might take longer than I thought—the magic is _really _deep."

Harry rolls his eyes. "Yes, well. Ten days, remember, or I'm leaving you here."

"We'll see."

The kindly old woman who runs the hostel ushers them into a tiny but expensive bungalow with planted geraniums all along the front. Harry waits for Draco to make a smart, derisive remark about the general tackiness and cheapness, but he just thanks the woman in perfect Neapolitan Italian (and Harry is grateful, really, because his Neapolitan is shit compared to the other dialects) and pushes inside the bungalow. He sweeps a look over the small space, the two twin beds and the tiny kitchenette and even tinier loveseat, and Harry thinks _okay, here it comes_ but once again, more surprises.

"Too bad there's two beds instead of one," is all Draco says, and Harry has to stare at him again.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Sure." But he's smiling again, more than Harry ever remembered him smiling before, and this is why remembering is bad—sometimes, you remember so much that the present can catch you off guard.

Now, though, he's wondering if he's looking into the snow globe, seeing another alternate thread of reality, because this doesn't seem like the Draco with whom he crashed and burned. This isn't even the Draco of Hogwarts, or the Draco of the war. And it's been almost six years since the breakup, six years of bouncing around different parts of the world and being so careful not to cross paths, but Harry can't imagine Draco changing this drastically in only six years. That was a big part of why he'd ended things—he couldn't imagine Draco ever changing, really.

This is a trick, Harry realizes. It has to be. This is a fake Draco, a carefully cultivated ploy to reach past Harry's defenses and—well, he's not sure what Draco would want to do. Knows he wouldn't want to get back together, not after the things they had said to each other, not after six years of careful avoidance. The thought is ludicrous, absurd, something he's only ever allowed himself to consider when looking into the snow globe (because that's the beauty of the globe, really—he's allowed to consider almost anything, all the possibilities. He's written notes on that phenomenon, though he's never shared them).

So he pushes it aside and says, "Well, I'm honestly happy that there are two beds, because I'd like to keep this trip from being as uncomfortable as all fuck. That doesn't seem to be something you want, though."

The smile drops off Draco's face, and Harry feels both bereft and triumphant. "You have no idea what I want, Harry."

And Harry thinks that's the most truthful thing he's ever heard Draco say.

**I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker**

Their first kiss is sweet and chaste and happens in a park; they're saying goodbye for a while because Draco is going to Oslo to map out some discordant magical signatures, and Harry is still training in Bea's shop.

"Come with me," Draco tells him, and maybe they've been friends for a while now and maybe Harry hasn't thought of him with anything but positive emotions for ages, but this is the point where he falls a little bit in love.

He says, "I can't," even though he wants nothing more in the world than to say he can, and Draco looks so disappointed that he has to kiss him, _has to_.

He does. He presses their mouths together, and Draco responds hesitantly, kissing back like he's a bit unsure of what he's doing. They both get bolder, though, mouths opening slightly, kissing deeper, and when they pull away they're both smiling like idiots.

"Wow," Draco says breathlessly, laughing a little. "You're making a very good case for getting me to stay."

"No," Harry says, because he's seen Draco's fingers quivering over maps, dancing over lines that mean nothing to Harry except for what they mean to Draco. "I think that's just a good way to part, isn't it?"

"Good way to get me to come back," Draco says, and he leans in again for their second kiss.

_In reality, they had a huge row the night before Draco was set to leave for Oslo—months after their first kiss, which was rough and sharp and nothing but a speed bump on the way to sex. Draco never asked Harry to come with him, and that had stung even more than his leaving did. Harry just figured they weren't the type of couple that did that, mixed their professional lives together (even if they were perfectly mixable, the magical cartographer and the magical_ _anthropologist). _

_Until Draco came back, and things were different, and suddenly they _were _the type of couple that mixed their professional lives together, and everything worked wonderfully that way until it didn't._

_But Harry doesn't like to think about that._

Harry found the snow globe in a Muggle tourist shop in Krakow, on the way to Warsaw and searching for the silly belt. He'd grabbed it because it was clearly magical in a shop full of Polish Muggle knickknacks, and he'd paid entirely too many Euros for it and brought it back to his hotel. He had gotten out a quill and a piece of parchment to Owl Bea about his completely random find when he looked at it closely for the first time and nearly knocked it off the table.

He saw himself, and Draco, age 11 in Madame Malkin's, meeting for the first time, two tiny figures swirling in cheap-looking snow and glitter. But it wasn't really him and Draco—it looked like them, spoke like them, their small voices filling the globe and somehow leaking out in glowing light, but it clearly wasn't them. They were friendly with each other, cautious and nervous but _nice_, good.

Harry shook the globe, and he saw more firsts that never happened, firsts he's always wished for.

He never told Bea about the globe, never told Hermione or anyone else who would be academically interested, but Ron saw it once, caught him a few months after he'd brought it home, staring into it blearily, hungrily. He hadn't really asked questions, though it was clear he wanted to, and he clapped Harry on the shoulder and dragged him out for a pint. He tried to make Harry talk about Draco, something he never liked to do, and when he failed, he started making completely unsubtle references to the Mirror of Erised.

"It's not the same," Harry insisted, because it wasn't. The Mirror of Erised is what he wants the most, not all he's never had. The Mirror of Erised is so much better, and the snow globe is much more addicting.

"I'm not obsessed," Harry said, and it was clear to the both of them that he was lying. But Ron let it go like a good mate, backed off, and Harry made sure to never let him catch him looking at it again.

But he still looks at it. He has it with him now, shrunken in a magically protected bag in his rucksack, ready to be pulled out when he gets a moment alone. It's all he can think about as he and Draco make their wandering way around the little town of Agerola, playing Muggle tourists and getting the lay of the land.

Tomorrow Harry will start talking to people, making polite inquiries and charming his way into shops and homes of people who might know things, but today they could be any other travelling companions (he won't say couple, won't even think it). And it's nice, and comfortable, and a little exciting, just the way it always was.

But Harry doesn't like to think about the way it was. He wants to think about the way it is, the way it really is, and the way it isn't. That's why he wants the globe—looking at all those could-have-beens really drives it home about what didn't happen.

They walk around town, and Harry tries very hard to tune out Draco's pleasantness, to concentrate on the way his fingers keep twitching and moving like they're curling around an invisible quill. Harry knows that Draco is never truly happy unless he is mapping; he knows that he doesn't look at things the way that everybody else does, sees magic instead of dirt, lines instead of streets, borders instead of exits and entrances.

(Once he drew a map of Harry's body, the bumps of his spine and the soft slopes of his buttocks and the curve of his cock and all the circles and lines in between. He showed it to Harry and Harry felt so good about it because it finally meant that he _saw _him, and he knew him, and it was if he didn't need to map anywhere else.

But then he left again. Draco was always leaving.)

Before long, they're back at the bungalow, and Draco has been nothing but nice, polite and engaging and friendly, everything that Draco isn't. Harry ignores it as much as he can, shuts himself up in the bathroom with the snow globe to remind himself what's not real and then goes to bed after a grunted goodnight.

"We can push the beds together," Draco says quietly into the dark, not enough inflection in his voice to tell Harry whether he's joking or not. Harry just huffs in the negative.

"Go to sleep, Draco."

"I'm glad you're calling me that," Draco says. "I was afraid I'd be Malfoy again. You always called me Malfoy when you were mad."

"I'm not mad. And I haven't called you Malfoy since—" Since the club days, since before Oslo. But Harry doesn't like to think about that. "Just go to sleep."

"I call you Potter in my head sometimes. But not in a bad way."

The sad thing is that he knows what Draco means—sometimes, he had used Potter like a term of endearment, to convey exasperated fondness. Harry can hear it echoing in his head and it makes him sort of shiver.

He says, "Goodnight, Draco," and dearly hopes Draco will wake up acting like a bastard tomorrow.

He doesn't, and Harry really shouldn't be surprised. Draco Malfoy has never made things easy for him.

Draco has his journal and quill ready on their next walk-around, and Harry sighs in relief, but somehow over the years Draco has learned to talk and draw, pausing only intermittently to follow a tangential trace of magic or scribble furiously at a particular line in the journal. He keeps up a steady stream of chatter as they head into town and seek out locals. Harry had grown used to working alone, and even when he had worked with Draco, he had never heard so much from him, and so he's grinding his teeth and clenching his jaw well before noon.

He resolves to tune Draco out as best he can and instead uses his own Glamoured wand to pick out Wizarding establishments in the marketplace. Whenever he works with mixed Muggle and magical folk, he always searches out the magical side first, to eliminate the more obvious ideas before moving on to the more mysterious Muggles. It's much harder to find something when the person you're questioning has no idea what it is that they possess. A wizard will be sly and stealthy about it, but in doing so they leave themselves more open to Harry's searching, and therefore easier to work around.

He starts out in a bookstore, poking around and enjoying the way the shopkeeper doesn't react to Harry Potter. This is 70 percent of the appeal of travelling—the anonymity he can have, and the lack of attention.

So of course Draco ruins that completely by whipping his wand out and casting revealing spells all over the bookshelves, drawing the attention of the shopkeeper and then three other customers.

"_Draco_!" Harry hisses as the shopkeeper starts over, wringing his hands. "What are you _doing_?"

Draco shrugs. "Helping you?"

"This is not—this is not how I do things, you know that!"

"There's magic in here," Draco says flatly. "A lot of it. I'm trying to find—"

"_Signore_," the shopkeeper cuts in, and Harry sighs as he starts jabbering at Draco in more Italian. "What can I help you with? What are you looking for?"

Draco opens his mouth to answer, probably perfectly and flawlessly and exactly what Harry _doesn't need_, so he cuts off and says, in his own stilted dialect, "Hi, no, we're just looking around. I was wondering if you could show me to your collection of grimoires? I had heard that this shop—"

"Ah," says the shopkeeper, and his dark eyes are glittering. "So you have heard, then. That the _Clavicola de Salomone _has come to our town, yes? I thought so—it is not the season for the tourists, you know."

"So you know about it. You know where it is," Harry says, not breaking eye contact with the man but very aware of Draco still casting covert spells from his left. The shopkeeper grins, yellow and unpleasant.

"Of course I do not. If I knew where it is, I would be burning it. I hope that when you find it, you will do that too."

Harry frowns. "Why would you burn it? That's a manuscript sacred to magic."

The man's face clouds over. "_Signore_, you do not understand about magic. You do not understand what was once sacred, and what is sacred now."

"What does that even—" But now Draco cuts in.

"It's not here," he says lowly, in English, shooting looks at the shopkeeper. Harry glares at him.

"How do you know that?"

"I'll—look, let's just go, I'll explain."

"No, I'm in the middle of—"

"Trust me, Harry, for God's sake," Draco says, gritting his teeth and jerking his head to the side. Harry looks around and sees everyone in the shop staring at them intently, faces shadowed and afraid. The atmosphere in the shop is suddenly thick and wrought with fear, and from the way Draco is fidgeting Harry can tell he feels it, too. Harry sighs and nods slowly.

"Fine. Thank you for your help," he says to the shopkeeper, who just nods back and gestures towards the door. They leave, stiff and tense, and once outside Harry whirls to look at Draco.

"What the _fuck _was that in there? If this entire trip is just going to be you undermining what I'm trying to do, then we are separating right here and that's—"

"Harry, did you see his face when he was talking about the Key?" Draco asks, talking right over Harry. "He's scared out of his wits of the damn thing—they all are. You're not looking at this the right way—you think this is just an ordinary, old manuscript that will be interesting to study, not the most powerful collection of Dark Magic of all time. And yes, don't look at me like that—it _is _Dark Magic. Except back then it wasn't considered Dark; there was no such distinction. Magic was magic—it's what you did with it that made it dark or light." The look on Draco's face is plain—he still believes that magic is magic, which is something all Dark Arts obsessives hide behind to justify it. It's Harry's least favorite part of Draco. But Draco doesn't say that now, bites his lip like he wants to but won't. That's new.

"Look, maybe that's true, but the fact is that I still have a way of doing things, and that doesn't include casting spells all over the place and being obnoxious," Harry says, folding his arms over his chest. "Stay out of this, okay?"

"You're an idiot, and you _still _don't know how to listen," Draco answers, eyes suddenly blazing. "But go ahead, keep running around asking extremely superstitious people about a Dark Arts grimoire. I'm sure they'll assume that you just want to _study it_."

"But I_ do_ just want to study it."

"Okay, now you're just being contrary for the sake of being contrary, I think. How the fuck are a bunch of paranoid Neapolitans supposed to know anything about your intentions?"

"I'm not going to fight about this with you," Harry insists. "Just butt out."

Draco throws his hands up and purses his lips, but his eyes are still fiery, and Harry knows his must look the same. He turns and starts stalking down towards the town square, not caring if Draco follows, only caring about calming down the burning heat in his gut and the sizzling in his veins.

He tries very hard to deny that he's missed this.

The rest of the day only backs Draco's theory up, though—Harry gets a lot of slammed doors and distrustful glares. One woman fires off a shield spell to keep Harry from even entering her shop, having been tipped off about him by the bookshop man. One woman calls him a _farfariéllo_, which Draco helpfully tells him is Neapolitan for 'devil'. Harry frowns, annoyed and frustrated, and tries to move on.

"_Nomme Salomon dominatus daemonum est?_" Draco says at one point, because of course he's the kind of pretentious magical scholar that quotes in Latin now. Harry glares at him, and Draco smiles sweetly. "It means 'had not Solomon dominion over the demons?'"

"I understand Latin, Draco."

"Good, I had hoped so. It's something to think about, isn't it?"

"You realize that Solomon didn't actually write the Key, yes? And anyway, it's not going to stop me from finding it." Draco shrugs, looks at his notebook.

"Sure, sure. Knock yourself out, love."

"Just shut up."

When they stop for lunch, the tiny _trattoria_ they pick is still large enough for them to notice that everyone gives their table a wide berth, whispering furiously in their low dialect as they contemplate their menu. Harry groans and Draco chuckles, and it's only after he's had a few gulps of rich wine in him that Harry can finally feel mature enough to concede. "Okay. So you might have been right about just asking people. What do you want to do?"

He waits for Draco to start rubbing it in, waits for the smug Malfoy grin/smirk hybrid that is sure to follow a moment like this. But Draco just nods and takes a delicate bite of his _gnocchi,_ chewing thoughtfully, before answering without a hint of derision in his voice.

"Well, first of all, we should stop wasting our time with the wizards."

Harry blinks. "Never thought I'd hear you say that."

"It's obvious they don't have it, and not just because I've been tracing the magic in a way that tells me how old it is," Draco says, and Harry rolls his eyes. "No, if they have it, they'd have burned it by now. And if they'd have burned it, they would tell you, and that would be the end of it. No, some clueless Muggle has it and is probably using it to scare the shit out of this whole town without knowing it. Muggles are trickier, you know that."

"I know that," Harry repeats, slightly annoyed.

"We can't just go knocking on their doors."

"I know that too."

"We have to be subtle, like a Slytherin."

And Harry rolls his eyes. "You think that every situation calls for acting like a Slytherin."

Draco grins, a bright, sharp and utterly attractive grin that Harry has to avert his gaze from. "Every situation _does _call for acting like a Slytherin."

Harry takes some time to strike out for a bit more with the magical folk, not satisfied until he's absolutely sure that one avenue has been exhausted. Draco clucks and tsks but remains otherwise nonjudgmental, and Harry is both grateful and wary—he still can't figure out Draco's game here. And of course there's a game—Draco always has a game.

That night, he pulls out his notes on the snow globe, spells them to look like a text on the Key of Solomon, and reads them carefully, measuringly, in bed with Draco just across the room.

_This is what will never happen. This is what can't happen, because Draco isn't what you want._

They're the worse case notes in the history of case notes, basically, but Harry stopped caring about that long ago.

**I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be**

They have their first fight as a couple just a few weeks into their new relationship.

They are talking about the war, something they never do. Harry likes to forget about the war, because sometimes he can't look at the war and reconcile that Draco with the Draco that he loves now. But now they are talking about it, their voices rising and tensing, and Harry is stubborn and Draco is stubborn and sometimes that is the worst combination of all.

And then Draco says, "I'm sorry," and just like that, the fight's over. Harry smiles, relieved, and he forgives Draco, and he loves that Draco can see that he was wrong, that there was a good side and a bad side and Draco was on the bad side.

There are not too many fights after that one.

_And maybe this vision is the most ridiculous of all. There were so many fights, Harry cannot possibly remember the first one. He cannot even imagine having a fight in which no one shouts, or a fight in which Draco ever admitted that he may have made mistakes in the war. He always talked about his family, about loyalty, about stupid fucking blood purity, like that would do anything to help his argument in Harry's eyes, and he could never see the sides like Harry could. _

_When they kept the war out of it, concentrated on the present and the future, it was good. But Draco always had a way of picking at history like a scab, and Harry never understood that, though he was just as bad._

_He has gotten better at leaving history alone now. History is so unsatisfying compared to the snow globe._

Over the next few days, Harry begrudgingly takes Draco's advice and starts talking to Muggles. They separate a few times (Draco still gets a bit twitchy when he's far away from magic for too long, and Harry smirks to remember it) and those are the best times, the least stressful.

He does not miss Draco when he is gone. He doesn't.

Harry is good at this, coaxing information out of people, getting them talking and rambling and inadvertently dropping Harry all sorts of clues. He listens for nearly two hours while an old washerwoman tells him stories about her grandkids, a fisherman and a dancer in Rome and a _financial consultant_. She says this last bit with an air of baffled pride and he smiles, delighted; she knows nothing about the Key of Solomon but she is so happy to have someone to listen.

The Muggles like him a lot more than the wizards do; this is not unwelcome.

When he and Draco do work together, Draco stays out of his way as much as possible, though he does still try to engage him in conversation a lot. Harry wishes that he would just get lost in his drawings and spells the way he always used to—he doesn't like this Draco, who seems to try so hard.

(He won't say he misses the old Draco. He won't.)

At night, Draco enlarges parchment magically and transfers the drawings in his journal to the large, spread-out sheets on the floor. He puts glasses on, thick lenses to help keep the lines from blurring, and he claims he never needs them any other time but Harry remembers his squint.

He smudges paint onto the maps with his wand, lying on his stomach with his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration, and it is so painfully familiar, so wonderfully Draco, that Harry has to shut himself up in the bathroom and pull out the snow globe again.

("_This _is magic," Draco used to say, gesturing to his maps, fingers stained with paint and ink. He was irresistable, then, so lost in his craft, and _home_, he always drew the bigger maps at home. Harry would touch his shoulders, clamp on, and think _stay stay stay_.

Draco never stayed, never for long.)

One night, he brings the snow globe into the bathroom:

**('til human voices wake us, and we drown)**

They make love for the first time after Oslo.

Harry has never been with another man before; Draco has only had schoolboy fumblings, hasn't gone all the way. They touch each other with shaking, trembling fingers and look at each other with wide, awed eyes.

Harry says, "I'm glad you're back."

Draco says, "Me too," and they kiss each other deep and slow, more confident in this than anything else. They kiss with purpose and ease and the longer they kiss, the more sure and certain their touch becomes.

They strip each other very slowly, taking time to look at each other and blush. When they touch groin to groin for the first time Harry groans, shakes. When Draco first presses spelled-slick fingers inside of him, Harry whimpers and bites his lip, and Draco looks at him, worried.

"It's okay," Harry says. And Draco smiles, and he touches him some more. Then there are no more fingers but more pressure, building, sweet and hot and painful.

It doesn't last long, but it's okay because Draco looks at him the whole time, they keep eye contact and they listen to the sounds they each make and they rock each other into climax. After, they curl up against each other, whisper cleaning spells against their skin, and then they whisper three more words.

It is perfect.

_The first time they made love was nearly three months after the first time they had sex—Harry was sure they were going to end it that night. He had been with someone else while Draco was away, angry and spiteful and hurt at how long he'd been gone, and then Draco was back and they were fighting again, and Harry was sure that this was the end._

_Except then Draco said, "I fucking love you, you idiot, and I can't believe you think that I want this to be over. I can't believe that _you _want this to be over."_

_Harry said, "I _don't _want this to be over," and that was so fucking true, because he couldn't imagine not being with Draco, not fighting with him or touching him or loving him in some weird, twisted way. Draco had always been there, from the very beginning of everything, the beginning of magic for Harry, and sometimes Harry couldn't picture magic without him._

_They came together roughly, then, like they always did, harsh and fast, but when they were in bed it was different. They slowed down by mutual agreement, they looked each other in the eye, they used touch for prep instead of the hastily muttered spells they usually used. Harry said, "I love you," in a firm, sure voice and Draco started, shocked, even though he had been the one to say it first. _

_They made it last a long while, and they took their time for once. And when it was over, Draco quietly explained that he would have to leave again, but then he said three wonderful words: "Come with me." _

_It was perfect. _

_Harry fell in love, then. But he doesn't like to think about that._

And so he's looking into the snow globe and he's—he won't say he's remembering, but maybe he is. He has his hand in his pants, rubbing, ashamed at how weak he is but too into watching and remembering to really care, and he almost misses the muttered, "_Alohomora,_" from outside the bathroom door and the click of it opening.

But he doesn't. And he doesn't miss Draco in the doorway, smirking. "Knew you were wanking in here," he says, eyes flashing in triumph. Harry jerks back, startled, incensed, and glares up at Draco, who won't avert his eyes. "Need a hand?" Draco asks, and there's humor in his voice and bit of teasing, but Harry ignores that.

He carefully puts the snow globe on the bathroom counter and zips himself as best he can, ignoring the fact that he's still rock hard with Draco in the room (_because _of Draco in the room, but he won't admit that).

"Get out," he says, voice low and hard. Draco rolls his eyes.

"Oh honestly, Harry, there's no need to be embarrassed; this isn't the first time I've see you with a hand down your pants, relax—"

"Get _out_, for fuck's sake, Draco!"

"What is that?" Draco asks, ignoring him, stepping towards the snow globe. "My God, is this a pornographic crystal ball? That's genius!" And then he touches it, before Harry can stop him, and gasps, eyes caught on the images in the globe, the swirling snow and glitter surrounding two rocking, sweaty bodies. "That's—that's us."

"No."

"It is, though. Is it a sort of Pensieve?"

"That's not us, Draco."

"Unless those are two extremely attractive actors Glamoured to look like us—it's us. Harry, you dog—"

"That is not _us_, Malfoy."

Draco freezes, staring at him, finally looking away from the globe. "You—you called me—"

"That is not us, okay? That's—the people in that snow globe are happy, they're in love, they're _good_ and they're perfect. We are not them. We were never them, and we can never be them." Harry looks away as he watches hurt flash across Draco's face, because he can't watch himself hurt Draco, never could.

"I don't understand."

"There's nothing to understand—that is mine, not yours, and you should just forget about it, okay? Just—stop. And stop being nice, stop talking to me all the time, just draw your maps and leave, okay, I know that's what you really want."

Draco's eyes flash hard. "And I'll say it again—you have no idea what I want. Maybe if you would _listen_—"

"I don't have to listen anymore, remember?" Harry says, and it seems to make all the fight just leak out of Draco at once, as if the reminder of the breakup is like taking a sharp pin to him.

Harry grabs the snow globe away from Draco and moves out of the bathroom. "I'm going to sleep. Just leave me alone."

Draco doesn't follow, and Harry falls into a fitful sleep before he hears Draco come to bed, the globe shrunken and safely hidden in Harry's rucksack.

The next day, he gets up early and leaves without Draco. He spends the day listening to stories, the strange and sharp dialect slowly becoming smoother and more pleasant to him. When he returns it is night, and he doesn't know where the Key is but he doesn't really care.

Draco is sitting on the floor, and at first glance he has maps spread out in front of him. But then Harry looks closer and feels his heart stop when he sees that those are _his _notes on the snow globe, and Draco is reading them casually.

"You—" he starts, feeling every bit of himself flush red, but Draco just clucks and doesn't look up.

"This thing is _fascinating_," Draco says, his voice carefully blank. "Like an alternate reality Pensieve—or maybe more like the Mirror of Erised. This is what you wish had happened, this is what you _want_—"

"No," Harry says, and then he shuts up because Draco looks at him sharply.

"So this isn't what you want, these—these shiny, happy, fucking _boring _scenarios, then? Funny, you've certainly written enough about them, watched them enough."

"I want—"

"It doesn't matter, though, does it? Because no matter what you want—no matter what _we _want—it's never going to be good enough for you. It's never going to be as perfect as this—this fantasy in this stupid toy. I don't know why I ever thought differently." Draco chuckles, shakes his head, and Harry's own head is spinning.

"We never worked, you know that. You can't blame me for wanting something better."

"No, we never worked because you could never stop _wanting something better_. You wanted a family, and I wasn't ready; you wanted us to stop travelling, to stay home for a while, and I didn't want to yet. You wanted me to fucking _repent_, never even thought about looking at my side of things, and you wanted me to be some sweet little good guy that never said a bad word about anyone—"

"Of course I didn't," Harry says, even as he winces, remembering himself kicking Draco under the table at dinners out with Ron and Hermione, refereeing the conversations until Ron was making whip cracking noises under his breath.

This is why he doesn't like to remember.

"Whatever," Draco says, and he stands up and tosses a book at Harry, gathering the notes together with his wand at the same time. "I shouldn't have bothered, I really shouldn't have."

"What is this?" Harry asks, flipping the book open and identifying it as one of Draco's map journals. It's different than the one he has been carrying around, brown leather instead of black, much more worn, but it seems to have the same maps he's been scribbling for the whole trip: Agerola and the rest of surrounding Naples, up and down the coast. What sticks out for Harry are the dates—three years ago, Draco had mapped this place out top to bottom. "You've been here before."

"Of course I have. I've been all over Europe."

"You—you _lied_, just to get on this trip, just to mess with me?"

Draco shrugs. "Of course you'd look at it that way. I won't challenge your impression of me, don't worry. I'm leaving. Enjoy your trip and your _toy_."

"Is the Key of Solomon even here?"

"Of course it's here—I guess I'm not the only one you don't listen to."

"Stop it, and just tell me—why did you do this?"

And Draco shrugs again, not looking at Harry, waving his wand and packing his things carelessly. It's so familiar—Draco was always packing, Harry used to joke that he should have a permanently packed trunk at all times, just in case.

"I guess I thought—it's been six years. I've gotten sick of—of all this. I thought I could show you—but it's obvious that I'm never going to be what you want."

"Draco," Harry says, swallowing hard, but Draco just shakes his head and chuckles mirthlessly.

"So I'm Draco again, then?"

He doesn't wait for Harry to gather his wits and answer—he leaves, like always, he was always leaving, but for some reason now it feels different. Like he's running away.

It never felt like Draco was running away before—somehow, Harry always knew he'd be back. That was why they'd lasted as long as they did.

And maybe Harry's kept the snow globe since Krakow to remind himself that Draco always comes back; maybe he's always believed that, all these years, somewhere deep inside of him.

"Shit," Harry says helplessly, realizing what he'd just missed, realizing what he had just lost.

He has a feeling that Draco isn't coming back this time.

It takes him a few more days in Agerola to find the map.

He's tracked the Key of Solomon down to a small cottage by the forest, where a woman has been using it as a prayer book of some sorts. Had she been someone with magic, she probably would have cracked the Earth open and summoned any number of demons (and now Draco's Latin quote makes much more sense) but thankfully, Harry manages to charm it out of her and into a magically-protective case.

It's not as satisfying as it would otherwise be, because he'd lost so much more on this trip than he'd gained—lost so much that he'd never even realized he'd had. He has no idea where Draco is, doesn't even know what he'd say to him if he found him, but then he finds the map while packing to head back home, and he knows he has to try.

The map is enormous, hidden by a spell that is undone by a Summoning Charm (obviously on purpose) and spread out across the wall. It depicts the magic of Eastern Europe, blue and yellow trails of magical energy writhing and thriving across the parchment, and then bright green footprints, wandering around Southern Poland. A small banner identifies the footprints as belonging to _Draco Malfoy_, but Harry didn't need that to know.

Harry writes off a quick Owl to Bea telling her that he'll be longer than expected—possibly a month—and shrinks the map and leaves.

He catches up with Draco in Krakow (of course he does), a few streets away from that tourist shop with the snow globe he hasn't touched since Draco left. He has learned to live with the ache of longing, because he knows the snow globe can't give him what he wants—it can't even show him.

It is not the Mirror of Erised; he could never love the Draco in the snow globe, and he would never really want to.

Draco is sitting on a bench, sketching what looks like St. Florian's Church. He doesn't look up when Harry sits down next to him, holding the shrunken map in his hands, but he stiffens a little when Harry touches his shoulder.

"This is brilliant," Harry says, tracing his fingers over the map lightly. Next to Draco's green footsteps are Harry's red ones, overlapping each other.

"There are some incantations to show different areas of the world," Draco says. "I made one for myself, too, and I thought—I mean, obviously, I was inspired by the Marauders' Map. I thought you would appreciate that. I was going to give that one to you for your birthday, but then we—well, you know. I figured you didn't have any use for it, then."

"I always want to know where you are," Harry says. Draco smiles, small and unsure.

"Yeah? Six years of silence says differently."

"Two of which I spent obsessively watching this weird, defanged version of you in a cheap Muggle toy—which was never actually enough, by the way. And you—you could've come back, you know. I was always waiting for you to come back."

Draco's shoulders slump. "I wasn't ready."

Harry thinks about it, all the bitterness, the hateful words between them at the end. "You know, I probably wasn't, either."

"And now?"

Harry moves his hand from Draco's shoulder to grope for his hand, clasping it gently, not taking his eyes off their mingled footsteps on the map. "I'm here now, aren't I?"

Draco looks at the map, too, and Harry watches his fingers trail across the lines until they reach Krakow, touch this little point in space that means all the world right now. "I'm here, too."

Harry grins, looks up to see Draco grinning, too, and when they kiss, Harry doesn't think of the past, or the future, or what was or what couldn't be, what is or what can't be. He thinks of Draco's hand in his, his lips on his, and where they are—together, here, right now.

Harry likes to think about that.


End file.
